Ælswyth had been captured alongside her father, and, after his death, she chose to stay at Bebbanburg rather than return to her family in Wessex. “You can’t,” I had told her.

“Why not, lord?” she had asked. I had summoned her and she had stood in front of me, so young, so pale, so vulnerable, so enchantingly beautiful.

“You can’t stay,” I had spoken harshly, “because I have an agreement with your family. You will be returned to them when the ransom is paid.”

“But the ransom isn’t paid, lord.”

“Your father is dead,” I had insisted, and wondered why she showed so little grief, “so there can be no more ransom. You must go home, as agreed.”

“And your grandchild must go too, lord?” she had asked innocently.

I had frowned, not understanding. My only grandchildren, my daughter’s two children, were in Eoferwic. Then I did understand, and I had just stared at her. “You’re pregnant?” I finally said.

And Ælswyth had smiled so very sweetly. “Yes, lord.”

“Tell my son I’ll kill him.”

“Yes, lord.”

“But marry him first.”

“Yes, lord.”

So they did marry, and in time a child was born, a boy, and as is the custom in our family he was named Uhtred. Æthelhelm the Younger immediately spread a new rumor, that we had raped Ælswyth and then forced her into the marriage. He called me Uhtred the Abductor, and no doubt he was believed in Wessex where men were ever ready to believe lies about Uhtred the Pagan. It was my belief that the summons from Edward that had required me to travel to Gleawecestre to pay homage for my Mercian lands had been an attempt to bring me within sword’s length of Æthelhelm’s revenge, but why lure me across Britain to Ceaster? He would have known I would bring warriors, and all he would have achieved was to combine my forces with Æthelstan’s men, making the task of slaughtering either of us that much harder.

I had no doubt that Æthelhelm the Younger had committed treason by hiring Welsh troops to kill his nephew’s rival. But it made no sense that he would have persuaded the monk to tell me the lies that had brought me across Britain to Ceaster.

Beneath us, on the arena’s floor, the first prisoner died. A stroke of a sword, a severed head, and blood. So much blood. Æthelstan’s revenge had started.

Not every prisoner died, Æthelstan showed more sense than that. He killed those men he judged to be close to Cynlæf, but spared the youngest. Thirty-three men died, all put to the sword, and I remembered a day when I had handed Æthelstan my sword and told him to kill a man.

Æthelstan had been a boy with an unbroken voice, but I was training him to be a king. I had captured Eardwulf, also a rebel. It had happened not far from Ceaster, beside a ditch, and I had beaten Eardwulf down so that he lay half stunned in the scummy water. “Make it quick, boy,” I had told Æthelstan. He had not killed before, but a boy must learn these skills, and a boy who would be king must learn to take life.